February 09, 2005

Most of us know the Lord's Prayer, a model for prayer given to us by Jesus:

Our Father, who art in heavenHallowed be thy nameThy kingdom comeThy will be done.........

How many times have you said the words? It's easy to repeat them from memorization isn't it? How often do we reflect on what the words mean?

Take for example, Thy will be done. What if God's will for our lives is in conflict with what we want to do at the moment? Let's take a real life example. The PiC and I almost never argue, but it does happen occasionally. When I get good and ticked I have a flight instinct. I just want to get in the car and drive away fast. I don't care where. Fleeing is MY will and my mind is already halfway out the door.

Then the small calm voice says, "Stay."

MY will says flee, THY will says stay put.

My choice is rebellion or obedience. What does God say about choosing my own path?

Woe to him who strives
with his Maker, an earthen vessel with the potter! Does the clay say to
him who fashions it, 'What are you making'? or 'Your work has no
handles'?

If I have chosen to be His, then I have given over my life to Him. If I have given over my life to Him, I acknowledge that He is the Maker and I am the clay. I do not know the end from the beginning. I do not know the plans He has for me. For these things I have to trust Him. Often we learn to trust first in small ways, so we are prepared to trust Him when the decision we face is much more important and more difficult than whether to flee after an argument.

How do we know His will for us? Sometimes it is the still small voice. Sometimes it is through prayer. Sometimes it is revealed as we read His word. Sometimes He speaks to us through other believers. Often it is a combination of these things.

For today, ask yourself, do you really mean it when you say, "Thy will be done", if it means choosing His will over your own?

January 27, 2005

Throughout the Bible, God sent his prophets to the people. Their job was to speak God's word to the people. Unfortunately, that usually meant telling them that they were on the wrong path and needed to turn back to God. As you might imagine, this message was not always welcome and the prophets often paid the price. (You've heard the saying, "Don't kill the messenger?) For example:

Jeremiah told the King that Babylon would win the war and th0se who surrendered would live. He was cast into a well for his advice.

Do we have modern day prophets? What might a prophetic message to America look like today? I've always thought the message of this song had the flavor of modern day prophecy:

Keith Green: Asleep in the Light

Do you see, do you see
All the people sinking down
Don't you care, don't you care
Are you gonna let them drown

How can you be so numb
Not to care if they come
You close your eyes
And pretend the job's done

"Oh bless me Lord, bless me Lord";
You know it's all I ever hear
No one aches, no one hurts
No one even sheds one tear

But He cries, He weeps, He bleeds
And He cares for your needs
And you just lay back
And keep soaking it in,
Oh, can't you see it's such a sin?

Cause He brings people to you door,
And you turn them away
As you smile and say,
"God bless you, be at peace";
And all heaven just weeps
Cause Jesus came to you door
You've left him out on the streets

Open up open up
And give yourself away
You see the need, you hear the cries
So how can you delay

God's calling and you're the one
But like Jonah you run
He's told you to speak
But you keep holding it in,
Oh can't you see it's such a sin?

The world is sleeping in the dark
That the church just can't fight
Cause it's asleep in the light
How can you be so dead
When you've been so well fed
Jesus rose from the grave
And you, you can't even get out of bed

Oh, Jesus rose from the dead
Come on, get out of your bed

How can you be so numb
Not to care if they come
You close your eyes
And pretend the job's done
You close your eyes
And pretend the job's done

January 17, 2005

Jesus had a way of taking our expectations and turning things upside down. How would a King enter a city? On a donkey? Don't be foolish. Should we demonstrate our righteousness by forgiving seven times? How about 7 times 70? Who shall inherit the earth? Did you choose the meek?

One of these perspectives that is hard to grasp is our own weakness. In our world weakness is bad. Not so according to scripture as Paul related in 2 Corinthians 9-10:

9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For
the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults,
hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am
strong.

How exactly does one be strong through weakness? One example is from the man whose birthday we celebrate today, Reverend Martin Luther King. One night during the Montgomery bus boycott after being arrested and despairing over threats to his family, MLK came to the end of himself and prayed:

Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's
right. I still think I'm right. I am here taking a stand for what I
believe is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now, I'm
faltering. I'm losing my courage. Now, I am afraid. And I can't let the
people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my
courage, they will begin to get weak. The people are looking to me for
leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage,
they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing
left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone.

It seems upside down to us, but when we are willing to admit that there is NO WAY we can handle the situation we're in, forcing us to turn to God for help, in that weakness, we finally find the strength we need to go on. As the rest of the story demonstrates:

As he prayed alone in the silent kitchen, King heard a voice saying,
"Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand
up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even until the end of the
world." Then King heard the voice of Jesus. "I heard the voice of Jesus
saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave
me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave
me, never to leave me alone."

And as the voice washed over the stains of the wretched caller, King
reached a spiritual shore beyond fear and apprehension. "I experienced
the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before," he
said. "Almost at once my fears began to go," King said of the midnight
flash of illumination and resolve. "My uncertainty disappeared. I was
ready to face anything."

July 19, 2004

The first five books of the Christian bible; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, are known to the Jewish people as the Torah, or the books that God gave to Moses. To christians, they are the first five books of the Old Testament.

In the first book, Genesis, the first chapter, we learn that God is the author of all creation.

The heavens and the earth: 1-2
Light: 4-5
Firmament or heaven: 6-8
Dry land and Seas: 9-10
Grasses, herb, and trees: 11-13
Stars and seasons: 14-15
Sun and moon: 16-19
Sea creatures and winged creatures: 20-23
Cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth: 24-25

And finally man:

26-27: Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

You might be asking yourself, "Who is *Us*?" Let US make man in OUR image.......

Here is the first revelation of the triune God; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.

Elohim, God the Father created the heavens and the earth.

By verse two, we find God the Spirit present at creation:

"The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters."

If we read only the first chapter of Genesis, we find no direct evidence that God the Son, Yeshua, is present. Yet, it is revealed to us later:

In John's wonderful gospel:

1:3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

1:10: He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.

And in Colossians:
16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.

It should seem as if this were the work which he longed to be at; as if he had said, "Having at last settled the preliminaries, let us now apply ourselves to the business, Let us make man.’’ Man was to be a creature different from all that had been hitherto made. Flesh and spirit, heaven and earth, must be put together in him, and he must be allied to both worlds. And therefore God himself not only undertakes to make him, but is pleased so to express himself as if he called a council to consider of the making of him: Let us make man. The three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, consult about it and concur in it, because man, when he was made, was to be dedicated and devoted to Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Into that great name we are, with good reason, baptized, for to that great name we owe our being.

All things come to us from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.

June 03, 2004

I wrote this account for another forum in 2001. It's the true story of what I witnessed one day in 1999 in a former hen house. Some of you will not believe it. That's fine with me. I was there. I know what happened.

It was a Saturday morning in June 1999. I had slept in. I had plans to go to my cousin's house later in the day. She had invited people to come there to meet for prayer and to worship the Lord.

As I lay in bed I felt God tell me to call and ask my friend Ann to go with me to my cousin's. (I know some of you will find this incredible, but since I began my relationship with God about 8 years ago, I have found he will speak to me and direct me sometimes. I usually know it's him when it's something I had not planned or wanted to do on my own.) I hadn't planned to invite her because she lived 45 minutes in the opposite direction, which would add another three hours to my drive (it was already going to be 3 hours - so now it would be a total of 6).

Ann didn't drive. She had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she was under the age of 30. As a result she was unable to work or drive.

I was still lying in bed when the phone rang. It was Ann (tells you what God thought about giving me a little push in the right direction - and I replied....I was getting to it!) I told her about the meeting and asked if she wanted to go.

Although she had been pursuing her relationship with God about 6 months before this, some circumstances in her life had caused her to be discouraged and to back off some. She wasn't sure she wanted to go. I told her, "Fine, but all I can tell you is you're supposed to be there for some reason." She decided she would go with me.

Another reason she hesitated was her legs weren't working at the time. She was barely able to stand with a cane. If you're familiar with MS, symptoms can be episodic. Hers were becoming more frequent.

She had lost use of her legs a few times in the last year, and had lost her vision probably 4 times in the last couple years. It also causes painful electric shocks in your body, which happened to her all the time. Because of her increasing symptoms she had tried the latest meds, but had to stop due to the side effects.

With MS, when you have these episodes, you never know if you are going to get the lost function back this time (your sight, walking, etc.) They pump you up with steroids and hope the function returns. So far she had been lucky with little permanent damage.

So, it ended up that I went to pick up Ann and take her with me. The meeting at my cousin's was in a small former hen house behind her house. Ann barely made it inside into a chair before her legs gave out on her. She was in a lot of pain.

The meeting was informal, just a bunch of believers (maybe 20 people?) getting together to worship, no speaker. There were instruments up front for people to play and we began to worship. Ann still wasn't sure if she wanted to be there. Of course I told her to not participate if she didn't feel like it. She could just observe.

At one point my cousin's husband came up to Ann and asked if he could prayer for her. She told him no. When she talked to me about her hesitancy I told her the only thing I knew is that man had exhausted the resources we have to do anything for her.

At this point my cousin approached her and asked if she could pray for her. Ann agreed. My cousin knelt beside her, I was on the other side. The moment we began to pray, Ann's body began to shake uncontrollably. She looked down and asked if someone was moving her chair. Of course, no one was, it was the power of God upon her. It was an awesome thing to witness.

We probably prayed and talked for 15 minutes dealing with a lot of issues of forgiveness, and the love God has for us. Afterwards, Ann and I got up and went to my cousins house to go to the bathroom. It was when we sat down on the steps at the house she realized the pain in her legs was gone. She also had reported during prayer that her legs were hot.

By the next morning her legs were working normally again. She told us the heat in her legs and the bottom of her feet continued all through the next day.

It's been over two years now and Ann has shown no further symptoms of MS. She has gotten her driver's license and now works full time. Praise God!

I had no expectation that day of witnessing a miracle, but I'm convinced that we did. For some reason, God decided to intervene and allowed us to see His power, and in the process delivered Ann from MS.

It does lead to a lot of questions. Why her? (there were other people there with illnesses) Why then? I don't know these answers. And Ann, God love her, tells people she wouldn't have believed it either if it hadn't happened to her.

One thing I'd ask you to note, God doesn't need a big show, with an important spiritual leader to touch his people. This was in a hen house remember.

I don't know why he asked me to share this with you, but he did. I hope that it blesses and encourages you. I will treasure it for a lifetime.

Back to 2004: Ann is still a close friend of mine. She remains healthy today. Even though I was there and I saw what happened with my own eyes, I often need to be reminded that I saw God's power firsthand that day. It makes me understand the nation of Israel wandering and mumuring in the desert. How quickly we forget all He has done for us.

April 06, 2004

I recall a little over a year ago when the Iraq war began. I tried to pray throughout the day for our soldiers and for the people we were liberating. Whether due to war burn out or laziness on my part I haven't been nearly as diligent recently. Certainly we remember our soldiers when I pray with the Boy at night, but I haven't been concentrating on it full time.

Our soldiers are still fighting over there.

The least I can do to support our men and women and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan is to recommit myself to "pray without ceasing" for their safety, for wisdom, for success in completing their mission.

Please join me in fighting the spiritual battle. They need our prayers now more than ever.

March 29, 2004

Johnny Olsen, 41, went to police after watching the movie about the death of Christ to admit that he was behind the previously unexplained bombings against anarchist squatters in Oslo in the mid-1990s.

"The trigger that made him go to police and confess was that movie," his lawyer, Fridtjof Feydt, told Reuters on Monday

Hmmmm. A neo-Nazi confesses to a crime after watching the Passion. What was that charge of anti-semitism?

Of course we can expect the support of the clergy (sarcasm):

"This does not change my view of the film in the slightest," Oslo's Lutheran bishop Gunnar Staalsett told the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang on Monday, reiterating his condemnation of the movie as glorifying sadism and torture.

Beware. There are too many leaders in the church who are not christians. Europe especially has abandoned the gospel and replaced it with a social do good agenda.

March 16, 2004

We saw The Passion of The Christ on opening night. The theater was sold out.

As a christian, the story is very personal to me. How could it not be? This was God's plan to reconcile man to Himself. To do so, He took the punishment that I deserved upon Himself.

I couldn't do it for myself, because the sacrifice had to be without spot or blemish to be acceptable to God. Think of when Jesus was baptised by John. The voice from heaven says, "This is my Son in whom I am well pleased." In other words, this is the acceptable sacrifice. My Son, and my Son alone is qualified because he is both fully man and fully God.

We really want to believe there are scales somewhere, where the good we have done will be measured against the bad we have done. If the good outweighs the bad - Bingo - heaven! Of course none of us would ever have the scales tip in the wrong direction. That's for serial killers and pedophiles. The bible tells a different story. It says that all of us have a problem that we can't resolve on our own. No amount of work on the good deed side will outweigh what we've done wrong. The only way is to have the slate wiped clean. The only way to wipe the slate clean is to believe in Christ, to believe his sacrifice paid the price.

For this reason He lived. For this reason he laid down His life. He did it out of love, that we might once again be able to know Him.

I think I held my breath for about half the movie simply because I was anticipating what would come next.

The garden - the kiss is coming
After the arrest - Peter's denials
With Pilate - the scourging is coming
The Cross - who can bear it?

I've never seen a movie where the audience was so quiet, except I could hear weeping. Even after the lights came up, it was as if no one could move........and so very quiet.

When my mother asked me about the movie, I told her, "It was like watching the brutal execution of a loved one." This film is definitely not for everyone.

Did Mel take artistic license? He did with some things. Having Satan in the garden and at the scourging are not in scripture. Mary being at the Sanhedrin after the arrest is not in scripture. I might have done some things differently, but I didn't find anything in Mel's version unacceptable. As far as the charges of anti-semitism, I think Franklin Graham answered it best, "I worship a Jew."

Some of the things he included made me ponder things I hadn't considered. Mary is not mentioned being at the arrest, but wouldn't you go if you heard your son was arrested? I had always imainged the scourging hidden in a basement somewhere, but with the Romans, it's very possible it was done for all to see as an example. When the crucifixtion was over, imagine the despair at the scene of the cross. They did not yet understand the ressurection was coming.

One thing I was very happy to see included in the movie was the curtain of the temple being torn in two by the earthquake when Christ died. This represents the fundamental change brought by Christ's death. No longer is the presence of God confined to the Holy of Holies. The curtain separating God and man no longer exists. We can now know Him and approach Him with Christ as our High Priest.

So why would christians feel it important to see a depiction of the suffering. There are at least a couple reasons.

2 Timothy 1:8: Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God.

The Passion = The Suffering
of The Christ = of the Messiah

Suffering for the gospel is not something the American Christian church is very familiar with, probably because we have lived with the freedom to worship as we please. In fact, I believe it was Corrie Ten Boom who once said the American church is the only one who believes we will be raptured before the Tribulation. In much, if not most of the world, Christians have been persecuted for their beliefs, and still are today. How would I react if I were put in a position where I would have to suffer for the gospel? Would I hold fast to my confession of faith upon penalty of death?

It's healthy for us to reflect upon and remind ourselves the price that was paid to redeem us. Face it. We're spoiled. We've sanitized and aestheticized Jesus into a peace talking healer. The truth is much more brutal and much more profound. He came to die for us, and having done so, He proved Himself to be the Messiah by rising from the dead. The Cross and the Empty tomb. Without these two things, there would be nothing to believe in.

February 03, 2004

I've been following the story of The Passion of Christ movie, financed and directed by Mel Gibson, for what seems like forever. It will finally open in theatres Feb. 25.

World Net Daily is reporting the Mel Gibson agreed to make a change to emphasize that the film is not intended to be anti-semitic, (Link via Lilac Rose):

Mr. Gibson listened intently, hung his head, and was deeply moved. "What can I do," he asked? I responded, "When the last scene ends go to black, scroll these words across the screen: "During the Roman occupation, 250,000 Jews were crucified by the Romans, but only One rose from the dead."